Cape Good Hope 1652-1702

[p. 108]

18 Arnout van Overbeke

Translated from his ‘Alle de Rymverken ...’, Amsterdam 1699 (first edition 1672). This text is by a long way the most difficult of all those dealt with, and some passages are still doubtful in spite of consultation with several experts. He sailed in Zuyd Polsbroek on April 12, 1668 from Texel.

I asked a certain sailor who happened to come into the Kajuyt*, how he came to be on his way to the East Indies, since previously he had been a broker at Amsterdam. He answered, that a certain Pieter Janssen Duyf, formerly an innkeeper near the Playhouse and now also a sailor in our ship, once having thirty guests at a drinking-party in his house, had made them so tipsy, that they all swore to it and signed, but that nevertheless he had brought along only eleven of them, the rest having backed out. With such and suchlike matters, on Friday July 2 we reached the latitude of 33.18 [South], and that morning at sunrise, with a westerly wind, in rainy and murky weather, we sighted the land to the North of the Table Bay and Robben Island, 2 or 3 miles* distant. I went up from the Gunner's* Room to look, since [I had expected] the land to be much higher. We held a thanksgiving service, as was proper....

That afternoon [dr 22/7] we made the Bay and anchored. The senior officers went to salute the Commandeur, so that we [others] went off strolling here and there, and I reckoned that we were now at the house ‘of the Hart’ [?]. I could not tell you much about the Cape without padding [my story], which I have avoided doing thus far, there being little to tell. In the first place, it was Winter; and in the second place, I did not wish to sleep a night or two in the open, [just] to put up a flock of ostriches or some wild deer.... Besides, I did not wish to ask the Commandeur for the loan of 7 or 8 horses; and so I saw no monsters except the Commandeur himself. I was in his good books for the first ten days; but then, since the ex-Commandeur, Heer Cornelis van Quaelbergen, was to travel with us to Batavia, I got into touch with him to ask how he, our Borghorst, should be received on board. This the blighter took so amiss (since he always thought that people were talking about him, even if in conversation with only one person) that, when I came to ask him whether there were anything aboard which it would be useful to him if our Skipper took it along, so that I could give orders to invite our friends to the farewell-feast the next day, he replied ‘Have you come to fool or make fun of me?’ I said, that I did not enter his office to receive such a reply, and that I was showing him more respect than was due from me; and so I went off.

Next day our friends came, and the Commandeur said ‘Sir, with your permission I should like a glass of small beer, please.’ I said ‘Sir, would you not care for a glass of mom*?’ (which is a delicacy here). ‘Give me water,’ the brute said, ‘that is good enough for me.’ I regret nothing so much as that I did not ask the fathead what sort of water he wanted, sea-water or - some other kind. Well, what the devil! I was on my home ground!

[p. 109]

All his quarrelsomeness came from the fact that Quaelbergen was still so beloved that no one was very willing to have anything to do with him. Even the Hottentots, who each year give a free-will present to the Commandeur, were fed up with him: ‘What sort of a Captain is that?’ they said, ‘always Sieckum!’ (that is to say sick, bad, grumpy, uglyeverything that is no good is sieckum, thus bad tobacco is ‘sieckum Tabak,’ etc.); and that made our friend mad. He wants to get by force what in reality can be had only by affection. For that matter, he punishes himself every evening with a few glasses of spirits, which one of those in his confidence brings him under cover.

The people here grow up wild, and nearly all the women (as our folk themselves told me, since such investigation was not proper for me under such rule) have as it were a wattle hanging over their you-know-what [see Apron*]; but they insisted, that this is an appendage which they have from childhood. The men have their upper bodies and their privities covered with a beast-skin: the women the same, but these in addition have their legs loosely wound around with guts. Both men and women smear and anoint themselves with a certain kind of fat (otherwise they would not be so yellow-black), to close the sweat-pores against the cold; but I swear to you, that he who could not keep his hands off these anointed ones must have a murderous knife [penis].

While I was there a sea-cow was shot a day's journey or two from the fort, near a river in which many of them dwell. They brought the foot to the Commandeur, cut off at the ankle; it was truly no smaller than that of an elephant, so that it must have been a terrible beast; but not many of them are seen.

We set out again from there on August 12 [dr], after lying there for 14 days, and on Sunday morning got out to sea again after towing for half an hour, to the joy of all the crew who were plagued enough. I was not too well myself: I could throw everything up three times better than drop anything down, but at last I released the prisoner which I had carried under my heart for 8 days.

So we trundled along, well pleased to have lost sight of Africa: the little Cape Birds, white and speckled with-black [Cape Doves] followed us by thousands, as indeed they had also met us 14 days before we reached the Cape....